The publisher of Michael Wolff's explosive new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” delivered a message Monday to the White House: We won't back down.

Leaders of the publishing company said they have no intention of honoring the cease-and-desist order that President Donald Trump's lawyer fired off to derail publication of the book that has roiled Washington and infuriated the commander in chief and his supporters. The book was published by Henry Holt and Co., which is owned by Macmillan Publishing.

“The president is free to call news ‘fake’ and to blast the media,” wrote John Sargent, Macmillan's CEO. “That goes against convention but is not unconstitutional. But a demand to cease and desist publication — a clear effort by the President of the United States to intimidate a publisher in halting publication of an important book on the workings of the government — is an attempt to achieve what is called prior restraint."

“That,” Sargent wrote, “is something that no American court would order, as it is flagrantly unconstitutional.”

Framing this as a First Amendment fight and buttressing his argument with landmark free-speech opinions by Supreme Court Justices William Brennan and Warren Burger, Sargent declared this was “about much more than 'Fire and Fury.'”

“There is no ambiguity here,” he wrote. “This is an underlying principle of our democracy. We cannot stand silent. We will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our Constitution precludes him or her from achieving in court.”

Sargent said the company was resisting the demand not just on behalf of “Wolff and his book, but also for all authors and their books, now and in the future.”

“And as citizens we must demand that President Trump understand and abide by the First Amendment of our Constitution,” he wrote.

"You demand that my clients cease publication of the book and 'issue a full and complete retraction and apology,'" she wrote. "My clients do not intend to cease publication, no such retraction will occur, and no apology is warranted."

McNamara noted that Harder's cease-and-desist letter does not identify "a single statement in the book that is factually false or defamatory." Instead, she wrote, "the letter appears to be designed to silence legitimate criticism."

"This is the antithesis of an actionable libel claim," McNamara wrote.

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Outrageous Prosecutorial Misconduct Comes Home to Roost in the Cliven Bundy CaseBob Barr

There is an old Latin proverb, “Fiat justitia, ruat caelum,” which means, roughly translated, “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.” On Monday, January 8, 2018, the heavens fell on the United States Department of Justice. More specifically, on that day a United States District Court Judge, Gloria Navarro, dismissed the criminal charges that had been pending against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, two of his sons, and a third defendant, for nearly four years.

What made this action especially significant is not simply that the judge dismissed the charges, but that she did so with prejudice, meaning the federal government cannot later retry the defendants.

Such steps by a federal judge – dismissing charges and doing so with prejudice – are not routine, but they are unusual; not so significant, perhaps, as to warrant special attention by persons not directly involved. What happened in the Bundy case, however, is that important.

Monday’s announcement in the federal courtroom in Las Vegas should concern every American who carries with him or her an understanding of, and appreciation for, the rule of law. The judge’s findings should frighten every American. Why? Because they document and confirm how easily any one of us could wind up like Cliven Bundy -- the victim of overzealous, dishonest and vindictive government employees; including, most disturbing, those within the Department of Justice.

What makes the Judge’s ruling so important, are the reasons underlying the decision. In her ruling, Judge Navarro found that the government (including the United States Attorney’s office in Nevada and the FBI, among others) not only had withheld evidence from the defendants and their lawyers – evidence that was potentially exculpatory and could establish their innocence – but that it had done so repeatedly and willfully; that is, deliberately and maliciously.

A fair question might be posed, as to “why” the government had behaved in such a despicable manner; what was at stake that drove federal lawyers and law enforcement officers to engage in what the Judge noted was “outrageous” and “unconstitutional” behavior?

Was it money? After all, the federal Bureau of Land Management (a subsidiary of the Interior Department) was seeking over a million dollars from the Bundys; which, it claimed, was owed Uncle Sam because the ranchers’ cattle grazed on land claimed to be owned by the U.S. government. But is there a dollar amount beyond which the Bill of Rights does not apply?

Was it an egregious violation of the Endangered Species Act as claimed by the feds; grazing that threatened the very existence of a tortoise that inhabited this particular patch of sagebrush? But is a tortoise more important in the eyes of our Constitution, that human beings; does it, too, trump the Bill of Rights?

Was it because the government had conducted a fair and objective “threat analysis” of the Bundys and their activities leading up to the stand-off that took place (and ended peaceably) on April 12, 2014, and found credible evidence that the family and its supporters posed a clear and present threat to federal officials? Is it now impermissible to peaceably assemble on any plot of soil claimed by the government to belong to the government?

The Judge noted that the Bundys’ fear of federal surveillance and snipers, which preceded the 2014 stand-off, were in fact justified and well-founded; even though the government deliberately hid evidence of such actions and derided such assertions as fictions and “urban myths” conjured up by over-imaginative defendants.

The government claimed repeatedly that its agents “feared” for their lives in part because a “threat analysis” concluded that the Bundys and their supporters posed a very real and imminent danger of violent opposition. In fact, as the Judge found, the so-called “threat analyses” were based on nothing factual; and actually concluded just the opposite.

What appears to have been at the heart of the Justice Department’s unconscionable behavior was sheer hubris; the arrogance that comes from a superior sense of status and power, built on decades of legislative and judicial decisions concluding that the federal government can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whoever it wants and that its actions are not to be questioned.

A thorough investigation of this sorry incident is due by the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, the head of the FBI, and perhaps most important, by those in the Congress responsible for ensuring that our Constitution and laws are carried out with a far higher degree of integrity and respect than that which has been afforded the Bundy family. Moreover, unless those responsible are punished appropriately, surely other American citizens will find themselves the targets of future witch hunts.

And, incidentally, why is this case largely being downplayed, if not ignored, by most media outlets?

Monday’s announcement in the federal courtroom in Las Vegas should concern every American who carries with him or her an understanding of, and appreciation for, the rule of law. The judge’s findings should frighten every American. Why? Because they document and confirm how easily any one of us could wind up like Cliven Bundy -- the victim of overzealous, dishonest and vindictive government employees; including, most disturbing, those within the Department of Justice.

All Americans should be concerned about the rule of law. They should be concerned this could happen to them. And the biggest concern should be Donald Trump who has no understanding at all of the rule of law.

The President is the law, according to Donald Trump's personal attorney, John Dowd.

The "President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Dowd told Axios' Mike Allen on Monday.

For most people, Dowd's pronouncement echoed President Richard Nixon's infamous assertion to British interviewer David Frost that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

For me, it sounded a lot like Sly Stallone's pronouncement in "Judge Dredd": "I am the law!"

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What appears to have been at the heart of the Justice Department’s unconscionable behavior was sheer hubris; the arrogance that comes from a superior sense of status and power, built on decades of legislative and judicial decisions concluding that the federal government can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to whoever it wants and that its actions are not to be questioned.

And we have never had a more arrogant president than Donald Trump. Not even close.

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And, incidentally, why is this case largely being downplayed, if not ignored, by most media outlets?

I just googled Cliven Bundy. I see this story has been in the NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, Slate, LA Times, and on and on. Therefore this statement is a lie. But it is hard to get anything in the news except Trump and his thousands of stupid and ignorant tweets.

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Go Trump and take your historically low approval rating with you. Don't let the Oval Office door hit you on on the butt on the way out. I am sure your kids can find other jobs. Your kids can do manual labor so you don't have to bring in so many migrant workers.

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Was it an egregious violation of the Endangered Species Act as claimed by the feds; grazing that threatened the very existence of a tortoise that inhabited this particular patch of sagebrush? But is a tortoise more important in the eyes of our Constitution, that human beings; does it, too, trump the Bill of Rights?

If we don't protect the environment there will be no spot on the earth worth living for human beings.

Negative Population Growth, Inc. (NPG) is a national nonprofit membership organization. It was founded in 1972 to educate the American public and political leaders about the devastating effects of overpopulation on our environment, resources and standard of living.

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A thorough investigation of this sorry incident is due by the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, the head of the FBI, and perhaps most important, by those in the Congress responsible for ensuring that our Constitution and laws are carried out with a far higher degree of integrity and respect than that which has been afforded the Bundy family.

Trump swept into office opining about the need to change libel laws to make it easier to sue the “fake news” media. His chief of staff acknowledged in an interview on ABC at the time, “I think it’s something that we’ve looked at. How that gets executed or whether that goes anywhere is a different story.” More recently, the president vented, “Why Isn’t the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!”

This is not how the system works: Libel laws are a matter for the states, and congressional committees are not in the business of investigating the news media for doing their job. There’s plenty of bias in the mainstream press, but it’s hard to take Trump’s cries of #FAKENEWS seriously when—to take just one recent example—he’s said to be privately raging over reports that his own secretary of state called him a “moron” while publicly dismissing those reports as false. Even more foolish, his cries for action against outlets reporting what turns out to be inaccurate information could just as easily be used against the news outlets he likes.

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Senator slams Republican party for "attacks" on pillars of American democracy

"I worry very much about the attacks we're seeing every day in a variety of ways, not only from the Russians, on American democracy," Sanders said. "We have a president who clearly does not understand the Constitution of the United States, a president who attacks the media every day, and media has a very important role to play in our democracy."

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As a candidate for president, Donald Trump didn’t understand the Constitution—and didn't want to learn about it, a key campaign aide said.

“I got as far as the Fourth Amendment, before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head,” Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the Trump campaign, said in Michael Wolff's bombshell new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, excerpted Wednesday in New York magazine.

The book offers a bird's-eye view of Oval Office dysfunction courtesy of Wolff, who was given rare access and conducted scores of interviews with Trump and his inner circle after the 2016 election, but the candidate's lack of concern for constitutional basics remains a theme in his presidency.

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Sen. John McCain is taking a veiled swipe at President Donald Trump's ongoing attack on the fourth estate, cautioning that "how dictators get started" is by shutting down the press.

The Republican Arizona senator, in an exclusive interview on Meet the Press airing Sunday, admitted that the relationship between the media and elected officials can sometimes be tense — highlighted by the Trump administration's repeated sparring with reporters and the president calling news organizations "fake news."

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Democrats in states such as California and New York are considering legislation that would subvert a new limit on the amount individuals can deduct from their federal tax liability for what they’ve paid in state and local taxes.

If the state legislation works as intended, it could cost the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars that Republicans had counted on to offset the revenue loss from the corporate and individual tax cuts in the bill they passed last month. But Republicans don’t seem to be sweating it, or even thinking about it.

“I don’t know much about what their conditions are, so I hesitate to comment,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate’s lead author of the new tax law, told HuffPost on Tuesday.

Other senators who’d been closely involved in writing the tax bill, including Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), were similarly unprepared to comment on developments in the coastal states, which have been the subject of national news stories since last week.

“I’m not really familiar with what they’re doing,” Collins said.

What they’re doing is this: Legislation by California Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) would allow Californians to “donate” to a state fund in the amount they would have paid in state taxes, receive a credit for their state taxes for that donation and then, because the federal tax law still allows households to deduct charitable donations from their adjusted gross income, they could write off the amount they’d charitably “given” to the state.

Essentially, de León’s bill would let state residents dodge a new $10,000 limit on the state-and-local tax deduction, thus allowing the state to continue collecting revenue from its relatively high taxes rates. His office said roughly 6 million California households claim the deduction, reducing their federal taxable income by an average of about $18,000.

“What we’re doing as leaders of blue states,” de León said in an interview, “is being creative and as innovative as possible to provide tax relief to Californians who are going to refuse to foot the bill for these wealthy corporations that are going to benefit from this tax boondoggle.”

De León’s measure is the kind of reaction Republicans might have forestalled if they’d spent more than a few weeks writing their bill. Experts warned in December that states could hack the law through a scheme like the one de León has proposed, but Republicans had already completed the final bill after unveiling it the previous month.

Policymakers in New York and Connecticut are considering a different sort of end-around that experts had also suggested might work: shifting state income taxes onto business payrolls, which are still fully deductible under the new federal law.

“I think this is something [Republicans in Congress] should have seen coming,” Larry Zelenak, a tax professor at Duke University School of Law, said in an interview.

But Zelenak said de Leon’s plan would not necessarily succeed. Though the Internal Revenue Service has previously said it’s OK for states to trade tax credits for donations to state funds, Zelenak said there’s nothing to stop the IRS from reversing that decision if states start exploiting it.

“It’s just an administrative interpretation, and a new administration is entitled to try a new interpretation,” Zelenak said. “I am not at all sure it would win in the end.”

Several Republicans told HuffPost the same thing.

“If there is an intent to get around it in that respect, I think they’re going to find it more difficult than they might imagine,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said.

Nevertheless, Johnson suggested it was regrettable that the situation had come to pass, saying he would have written the bill differently, particularly its provisions on business taxation.

“This was not my approach to how we should have dealt with things,” he said.

Initially, GOP leaders wanted to eliminate the local tax deduction altogether but preserved it in order to win support from Republicans in high-tax states. Capping the deduction will increase revenue by $668 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and lead author of the tax bill on the House side of the Capitol, said state lawmakers should simply allow their constituents to benefit from increased economic growth brought about by the tax law rather than interfering with its implementation.

“They need to understand the era of tax-to-the-max is over because we’ve pulled the curtain back and now families and workers in those states now clearly see just how high a tax burden and how much their paychecks are being taken,” Brady said.

When HuffPost asked Brady what would happen if states didn’t take his advice, he repeated the advice.

De Leon, for his part, isn’t exactly going out on a limb with his proposal. His office pointed out that California already provides tax credits for donations to state education funds and that 17 other states have similar schemes essentially creating government subsidies for private education. He scoffed at the suggestion, which several Republicans have offered, that states should simply lower taxes in response to the federal change.

“Where would the money come from to pay for our schools, to pay for higher education to invest in human capital? Money doesn’t just materialize off the sky,” de León said. “It’s an absolutely ludicrous and irresponsible statement.”

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I know how to bring out the buffoonery of A Trump supporter.State Fact

Suppose Oprah Winfrey beats Trump in 2020. That would mean the Trump presidency would be sandwiched between two Afro-American presidents. Can you imagine anything that would upset Trump and his base more?

President Donald Trump on Tuesday predicted he’d clock Oprah Winfrey should she decided to run for the White House in 2020. Not necessarily so, says a new Rasmussen Reports survey conducted the Monday and Tuesday after Oprah gave her barn-burning, White House water-testing Cecil B. DeMille Award-accepting speech at the Golden Globe Awards. Polling results show 48% of likely U.S. voters would cast their vote for Oprah, 38% would choose Trump, and a needle-moving 14% remained undecided.

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(CNN)On Thursday, in a meeting with a senators and House members on immigration, the President of the United States, asked this: "Why do we want all these people from 'shithole countries' coming here?"Yes, he said "shithole countries" -- apparently in reference to the fact that immigrants from places like El Salvador, Haiti and Africa were being protected in a potential bipartisan deal to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and secure funding for border security.What's even more appalling is that the White House didn't even try to deny that Trump used that slur, which was first reported in The Washington Post. In fact, in a lengthy statement from White House spokesman Raj Shah, the administration seemed to even defend the sentiment. "Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people," said Shah.

But it gets even worse. Asked about the "shithole" comments, a White House official told CNN's Kaitlan Collins this:"The President's 'shithole' remark is being received much differently inside of the White House than it is outside of it. Though this might enrage Washington, staffers predict the comment will resonate with his base, much like his attacks on NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem did not alienate it."Stop. Read that again. Here's what it means: The President's voicing of a racist remark about the sorts of people whom we are letting into the country is actually a good thing because people who like Trump will agree with him.

Make no mistake: This is the lowest ebb of a presidency defined by a series of low ebbs and defining of the presidency downward. Yes, lower than Trump's comments about Mexico sending us "rapists" and "criminals." Lower than questioning Sen. John McCain's military service. Lower than his impugning of a judge because of his Mexican heritage. Lower than his questioning the motives of a Gold Star family. Lower than the 2,000 mistruths and outright falsehoods he has said since becoming President. Lower than his racially-tinged attacks on the anthem protests by NFL players. Lower even than his "both sides" argument in the wake of white supremacist violence against peaceful protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.This is not only a President of the United States voicing racist sentiment in front of a group of people. It is also doubling down on those sentiments -- proudly! -- because it might advance his political power among his base.This is -- much like Charlottesville -- an abdication of the moral authority of the presidency, but it's more than that: It's saying, quite simply, that saying racist stuff is a-OK as long as it works politically.

There are things that are -- or should be -- beyond politics. The most important of those things is the belief that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."It's right there in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. And, "we believe these truths to be self evident" because, well, they are. The progress to a more perfect union hasn't always honored this pledge as it should.

But this is 2018. Can't we agree that discriminating against people based on what they look like -- or what country they might come from -- is wrong?Apparently not, according to President Trump.Let's not make any mistake here: What was being discussed in the meeting in which Trump called Haiti and El Salvador "shithole countries" was not illegal immigration. This was a proposal to end the visa lottery, which Trump has repeatedly falsely suggested leads to other countries gaming the system to send the US their worst people, and replace it with affording a group of countries Temporary Protected Status (TPS).Nor should we dismiss this sentiment as a one off by Trump. Remember this June 2016 meeting, first reported by The New York Times, in which Trump was angrily decrying the fact that lots of immigrants from what he believed were less-desirable countries were still entering the country. The Times writes:"Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They 'all have AIDS,' [Trump] grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.

Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never 'go back to their huts' in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office."These sorts of noxious views are a feature not a glitch for Donald Trump. Everything in his history as a candidate and as President screams for that conclusion. For every "bill of love" pronouncement Trump makes, there are double-digit times in which he has said things -- publicly and privately -- that any reasonable person would describe as racially tinged at best and flat-out racist at worst.

Let me remind you in case you have forgotten: This is the President of the United States we are talking about. The President of ALL 300 million people -- not just the ones who voted for Trump and who might respond well to his "shithole" comments. The President of a country literally built on the idea of a melting pot of immigrants.The discussion of whether this will resonate with Trump's base then is deeply cynical and totally misses the point. There need to be things that are right and things that are wrong, things that we can all agree we should do or not do. Whether or not these things have some political resonance with some group of people is immaterial.We are talking about the President of the United States here! Not some fringe talk radio host? Not some blogger. The single most powerful person in the country. The symbol of the United States to the rest of the world.

Whether or not you voted for Trump, whether or not you still support him, whether or not you think this "shithole" comment will land well with his base, you need to acknowledge that voicing views like these is simply wrong. It is, quite literally, anti-American. Period. Full Stop.

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In September 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to be a "champion" for Haitian-Americans.

"I'm running to be president of all Americans, that's everybody, and whether you vote for me or don't vote for me, I really want to be your greatest champion and I will be your champion," Trump told a small group of Haitian-Americans in Miami.He added: "The Haitian people deserve better. That is what I intend to give them. I will give them better."

Trump's comments on the campaign trail are in direct contrast to his remarks Thursday, when he decried the migration of citizens from "shithole countries" referring to Haiti and African nations, sources told CNN. The President made the comments during an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers.

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President Donald Trump on Thursday questioned why the U.S. should allow more immigrants from "shithole countries" after senators discussed revamping rules affecting entrants from Africa and Haiti, according to three people briefed on the conversation. A sampling of reaction to Trump's remark:__"President Trump's comments are yet another confirmation of his racially insensitive and ignorant views. It also reinforces the concerns that we hear every day, that the President's slogan Make America Great Again is really code for Make America White Again." — Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.__"I look forward to getting a more detailed explanation regarding the President's comments. Part of what makes America so special is that we welcome the best and brightest in the world, regardless of their country of origin." — Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.__Trump's comments are "unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation's values. This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation." — Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, whose family came from Haiti.__"The United States' position as a moral leader throughout the world has been thoroughly damaged by the continuous lowbrow, callous and unfiltered racism repeatedly espoused by President Trump. His decision to use profanity to describe African, Central American and Caribbean countries is not only a low mark for this president, it is a low point for our nation." — Statement from the NAACP.__"President Trump has been consistently honest about the white nationalism behind his immigration policies. His latest salvo is directly contrary to the decision Congress made in 1965 to do away with the racist per-country quotas of the past and bring our immigration policies in line with the civil rights era." — Lorella Praeli, American Civil Liberties Union director of immigration policy and campaigns.__"Immigrants from countries across the globe — including and especially those from Haiti and all parts of Africa — have helped build this country. They should be welcomed and celebrated, not demeaned and insulted." — Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.__"We can now we say with 100% confidence that the President is a racist who does not share the values enshrined in our Constitution or Declaration of Independence." — Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.__"He's demonstrated himself to be unfit, unknowledgeable about the history of this country and the history of contributions that immigrants, particularly Haitian immigrants, have made to this country." — Illinois state Sen. Kwame Raoul, whose Haitian parents who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s.__"He's trying to win me back." — Conservative commentator Ann Coulter.

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